Laura McCurry Knotts

God's Little Bird Laura McCurry Knotts

75 years ago, hundreds of thousands of Baltic citizens were caught in the bloody crossfire of the Soviets and Nazis and forced to flee their homelands. Lithuanian citizens had suffered brutal persecution during earlier Soviet and German occupations, and by the end of the second Soviet Occupation, only 1 million Lithuanians remained out of a population of 3 million. Similarly, in what became known as the Lithuanian Diaspora, only one in three of those who fled Lithuania as refugees survived. These 60,000 surviving refugees were detained and sheltered in German Displaced Persons Camp and became known by the name of "God's Little Birds." This is the remarkable story of one such "little bird," a young boy named Joseph, who on a cold October day in 1944 was suddenly wrenched from everything he knew and held dear and forced to flee for his life, leaving his mother, brothers, and sisters behind surrounded by mined fields and under a sky black with bombs. However, like the story of the biblical Joseph who was forced into exile far from his homeland and family, God had His hand on this little Lithuanian boy, and in His providential plan, He brought Joseph safely through a journey of exile, loss, persecution, and despair into a new life in America where by God's grace, Joseph's story was transformed into one of belonging, prosperity, hope, restoration, and purpose.